by B. Clim
Azer was one of the one hundred forty-four gods.
There were twelve gods in each of twelve kingdoms. Each kingdom watched over a twelfth of the Empire, and included a member from each of twelve orders. The numbers had an interlocking and inseparable harmony.
The great gods minded the capital city of Narra, but Azer was from a minor order, and so his province was in a distant flank of the Empire. Like the others in the peripheral orders, Azer spent much of his effort in emulation of his betters, loitering about the perfections of Narra, admiring what the great ones admired, and only distantly noting the ongoing patterns of birth, death, migration, war, prosperity, and famine in his own province.
This neglect was reciprocal, for even in his province, Azer was only a minor part of the pantheon. At best his name might be mentioned in a ritual—say the celebration of midsummer—but invoked with little hope or passion. He was known as the god of measurement, and so the lack of intensity was understandable.
And yet the crisis that tilted the gods’ hold on creation started with the love of one of the smallest of Azer’s subjects.
####
Matt was the name of this subject.
Matt was abandoned by his parents when he was only five years old, and perhaps this explains why he turned to the god with such passion. With the same fervency that another child might idolize a favorite older brother—even though others didn’t see the brother’s virtues—Matt decided that Azer was the greatest of the gods. Matt spoke to the god in his thoughts all day long.
This intensity drew Azer’s attention. Azer enjoyed the boy’s nightly prayers, which drifted to him like incense. And slowly he began to focus on the boy and his immediate environment.
Azer, as he existed in Matt’s heart, was a new creature: brilliant as a knight in armor, kind as a mother, powerful as a thunderhead sweeping over the lake. Such an image, needless to say, was delightful to the god. He looked down more often to enjoy it.
####
Matt lived with his aunt, who was little more than a girl herself—maybe ten years older than him. She wove and mended nets, for their home was on the edge of an enormous inland lake, and the men of their village plied small craft to fish and trade with other settlements along the lake’s shore.
Matt’s father had left two summers before, carrying a spear he had fashioned himself, with a blade adapted from a broken fish knife and a shaft from a hoe. He said he was going to join the army of Duke Hector, the liege who held all the lands anyone in the village had ever set foot on. He said he would come back a hero. Matt’s mother followed him.
Given this abandonment, it may seem surprising that Matt’s preeminent characteristic was his optimism. His prayers to the god were not ragged pleas, but assured compacts. “I know you’re keeping them safe, Azer,” he whispered, as he walked in the town’s small communal vegetable garden. “You wouldn’t forget anyone who deserves your protection. Can you show me where they are?” he asked, and his own mind supplied the answer: He pictured a palace, a garden, a throng of elegant people. “I know you are loving, Azer,” Matt sighed in gratitude.
Matt would often tell his aunt Lilia something like, “I expect them back when the winds change. I have been thinking that they visited the far side of the lake and they must wait to sail back. I hope they are not cold or tired where they are.” He would stare out over the sparkle-drift water, and Lilia would stay silent, for she understood that his parents were gone for good.
####
One night Azer heard a call from Matt unlike any before. “Oh, Azer, protect me now! Protect me now, please!”
Matt and his aunt were curled together in their bed. She had her arms around him to shield him, while someone pounded on their door and shouted, “Open up! Open up now! I know you’re in there!” It was a man’s voice and not anyone from their village.
Azer saw the man on the other side of the door was a soldier from one of the bands that had been harrying Duke Hector for the last few years. A people from Allansa, they had been steadily moving toward the heart of Hector’s land. They captured cities on their route, razed smaller villages, and settled on the land themselves. To Azer’s eyes, this was a part of the pattern of history. Peoples came into conflict. Groups eradicated each other and took one another’s land. The stronger won, the weaker lost, as it had always been.
But Matt kept whispering, “I know you’ll save us. I know you’ll save us.”
The pounding on the door kept up, until the doorframe creaked in preparation to giving way entirely.
Azer watched, but he could not do anything. His brothers, his one hundred and forty-three brothers, would not approve of meddling. If they saw him touch the pattern in such a way, they would surely bind him and pull him back to the heart of the Empire. They would not trust him for millennia.
The door broke and the soldier kicked it down to the ground and stood on it.
Lilia pushed Matt behind her and pinned him against the wall with her arms. The boy kept up his confident prayers, his voice growing louder as the excitement of what was happening infiltrated his body.
In the dark of night, Matt and Lilia couldn’t see much more than a black silhouette in front of them.
“Why didn’t you open for me?” the soldier yelled. “Damn it!”
“Don’t hurt him,” Lilia said, making her voice as loud as she could manage, though it came out as little more than a whisper. “I’ll do anything if you don’t hurt him.”
In the silence after her speech, Lilia smelled the thickness of drink swirling into her home—as if a debauched giant breathed in through the door. And mixed with the spirits was a deep hint of filth—from a man who hadn’t bathed in months, who had marched unnumbered miles in that time, fought and been spattered with blood, and collapsed in his own vomit when he was drunk.
“They told me to sleep here,” the soldier said. The slur in his words was now obvious. His loudness came more from lack of control than from anger. He staggered forward. “There’s only one bed here. What are they thinking? They should all be roasted in a fire pit. Logisticians, puh!”
He crumpled onto the floor. He stretched out his legs and put his head on one arm. Within a few moments, he was producing a steady, droning snore.
Once she could trust his immobility, Lilia dropped her feet down off the bed and crept closer to him. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out more than his size—certainly not larger than the biggest men in the village—and the fact that he carried a sword and wore some sort of leather armor. She sensed some desperation in him, and she now felt that she should guard him.
She picked the door back up and leaned it in its frame. Then she sat on the edge of the bed. “You can sleep now,” she told Matt. “I’ll watch him.”
“Thank you,” Matt sighed as he pulled the familiar blanket around him. He looked up, thinking he was looking into the face of his god when he looked in the direction of the sky. “Thank you, Azer.”
This was when Azer realized he loved Matt. And he hated himself for not doing anything when Matt had needed him. It had not been his power that had prevented the soldier from harming Matt, but only luck. Azer vowed to find a way to protect the boy.
####
As the sun rose, light slowly made its way into Lilia and Matt’s home.
Lilia saw that the soldier had long black hair that was largely unkempt and a beard to match, so that his face was almost lost in hair. His armor and his clothing were plain, except for a red sash tied around his right arm. His sword was a curved blade, with a long, two-handed hilt.
Matt rose, and they both watched as a beam of sunlight—poking through a crack in their wall—crept across the floor, onto the soldier’s forehead, and down onto his eyes. This caused him to sputter, and, before he opened his eyes, he groaned and lifted a hand to shelter them.
“Where am I?” he asked. He couldn’t have seen them, and yet they both felt that he knew just who they were.
“You’re in our home,” Lilia said gently. She had seen men the morning after drinking heavily before.
“Where else could I be?” The soldier smiled to himself in rueful appreciation of his situation. “But where is this? What quarter of Tinnha am I in?”
“Oh, Tinnha is far from here. You’re in our village.”
“What?” He finally dropped the protection from his eyes. “Oh, all the demons of Taemo take me! How did I end up– No, don’t tell me.” He looked at Lilia and Matt, quickly but searchingly and comprehensively. He seemed to evaluate the situation in an instant. Then he stood and went to the door. He ran a finger along the cracked edge of the door frame. He looked back at Lilia and Matt sitting on their bed. “God, you’re just children,” he whispered. “Did I have a horse with me? Did you see a horse?”
Lilia shrugged.
“Damn!” He slid the door aside and stuck his head out to survey his surroundings. “Which way is Tinnha?”
Lilia pointed, and he set off in that direction.
####
On the road to Tinnha, the soldier, who called himself Black, passed a bent old man, who held up an alms bowl. Black was the only one on the road and he wondered how the old man could survive on such an unpopulated route.
The land around him was perpetually moist, the grasses and mosses bedecked in dew. And yet, the air seldom filled with a real, vigorous rain, just slivers of mist. He could see far out over the lake to his right, as the road ran along a hillside, except where the sky was broken by spiky, tall conifers.
Black was a mercenary. He had been in the area for more than a month, riding with the Alzian Corps on behalf of King Niell. He had served in the Alzian Corps for many years before this. Black’s own home was far away, and he never spoke of it. Not a single man in the Alzian Corps could have guessed where he came from or why he’d left his home. But many men in the corps kept secrets as if their lives depended on it. And Black preferred the company of other men who hid something and hunched around gaps of silence.
The road bent to avoid the black mud of a bog. At the end of the curve, Black saw another old man, contorted into the same posture as the one he’d passed a few minutes before—head down, one arm lifting the bowl into the air. Something about this recurrence made Black advance cautiously.
The old man’s hair, while grey and uncut, was so clean that it shone. His robes, as well, were pristine. Black knew that he had accumulated a good coating of mud since setting out that morning. How could the beggar stay so clean?
Black stared at the old man, wanting to see his face and yet terrified that he would lift his head and let the hair fall back from his brow.
“In the name of charity,” the beggar said.
This simple sentence spooked Black, and the armed soldier bolted up the road. He tired after a minute or two, looked back, and saw nothing other than an unwounded landscape of dark earth and the grey sky. He resumed walking up the road to Tinnha, not really sure why he did so, since he was convinced he had no hope of reaching the city.
Once more, Black saw the beggar ahead of him. The same unflinching, contorted posture. Black walked directly to him.
“I won’t allow you to pass me a third time,” the beggar said.
“I know,” Black replied.
The beggar straightened, dropping the alms bowl, and stood. Black saw what he had feared—the beggar’s face, which was indubitably not the face of a man. It was too beautiful, too pure, and too free from the burden of sorrow. The beggar was taller than Black and from head to foot the color of bright rain or moonlight. Black looked down at the mud, as that was easier for his eyes to comprehend. The beggar said, “I am glad you never relented and gave me alms. For I need a service from you, and I need a man as hard as you.”
“If I’m hard, why should I agree?”
“You are hard, but I know your secrets,” the beggar hissed. “I know your true name. I know the names of your wife and your two sons, who live in Krast Kingdom. A man such as you values his secrets more than anything—even his own life.” The beggar then spoke each of the secret names, slowly and terribly.
“You can make up for what you’ve done in the past,” the beggar continued. “That’s what I offer you. If you refuse, you will die before you reach Tinnha. The people you drove out of the city roam this land, looking for revenge. They are just ahead. I think, for all your renunciations, you need another chance at life.”
“Yes,” Black said.
####
Black knocked at the door he’d broken open the night before. Only Matt was home, and he called, “Yes,” from where he lay on the bed dandling two sticks he’d stripped of bark, playacting a duel.
Black pushed the door aside, trying to appear gentle and non-threatening. “Umm, hi,” he said.
Matt showed no fear at the soldier’s reappearance. After all, he believed in Azer’s protection. “Have you forgotten something?”
“No, no.” Black tried to structure his thoughts. “You see, I met someone on the road. I was heading back to Tinnha. You know that, right? I was one of your duke’s enemies. But I met Azer, and-”
“Azer?” Matt gasped. He sat up on the bed.
“Yes, Azer.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like a man, but not like a man at all.”
“Oh, thank you, Azer,” Matt erupted. He kneeled and clasped his hands in front of his heart, pumping them back and forth, as if trying to lessen the pressure on that overtaxed organ.
“Don’t thank anyone yet,” Black muttered, more to himself than to Matt. “Listen. Listen. He says I have to protect you. As well as I can figure, since this whole land is swamped in war, that means getting you out of here. We need to leave.”
Matt looked at Black, seeming to grow more concerned and scared by the moment. “But,” Matt said, then swallowed his thoughts. “But–”
“What?” Black asked.
“Will my parents be able to find me? They’ll come back here first.”
“I’m sure Azer’ll take care of that, kid,” Black said. After a moment’s serious consideration, Matt nodded. “Good, let’s go.” Black gestured toward the open door.
“My aunt,” Matt said, and he plopped back on the bed.
“All I know is I’m supposed to protect you,” Black said.
Just then, Lilia returned. “There’s smoke,” she said, before her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, and she saw Black. “Oh,” she said. “What-?”
“Azer sent him,” Matt quickly piped up.
“What do you mean?” Lilia looked between them. “Get out now. If you don’t get out now, I’ll scream.”
“No, listen,” Black kneeled and held his hands out, palms up. “Listen. I can’t leave. I’ve sworn to protect this boy. If I did anything else, I would be dead within hours. You might not believe that Azer has done this. But I swear to you now that this is true, and that I will do you no harm. I have never broken an oath, and this is a sacred oath. By Azer, I swear it. By every god.” Black dropped his head and waited for a response.
Lilia looked at his vulnerable neck. She had gazed at him through the night, not sure if she guarded him or guarded against him. She still didn’t know. But somehow what he said made sense. She found she wanted to lay her hand on the top of his head and declare that she accepted his service and would always rely on him—as a lady in the city might treat her knight. But she was too practical to give in to such a fantasy right away. She kept her distance. “Very well. I believe you don’t want to harm us.”
“I swear it. You could be my own family,” Black said, his voice as resolved as a knife scraping over a sharpening stone. Then he glanced up, and his eyes seemed far away, beyond beard and hair and dirt and sadness, but they were as brilliant as mountain tarns. “You said something about smoke?” he asked.
“They say it’s from the cove—Shelm’s Cove. The whole town must be burning; it’s everywhere.”
“That’ll be King Niell’s men,” Black said. “They’re going to drive everyone out, burn down your towns, take your land. I know—I used to be one of them. I might be in that attack if I’d gone back. That’s why we have to leave now.”
“Where does Azer want us to go?” Matt asked. “Will it be his own home?”
“He’ll show us once we start. We go away from this war for now.”
“But the rest of our family,” Lilia said. “Our people, here. We can’t abandon them.”
Matt nodded. “Azer couldn’t have meant that.”
“There’s very little time,” Black said.
“I have to tell them,” Lilia said, and she ran out the door.
####
Black had delivered a short speech about how the village was doomed to its assembled adult residents. He had then walked out of the hall (also a barn, stable, and storage house) where the villagers went on discussing what to do. Black knew what to do: leave right away. He had told them that. And he didn’t see any reason to go on discussing it.
He watched the children of the village—too frightened to play and yet unable to be still. Like him they had no interest in discussion. They walked around the hall. They threw rocks into the lake, challenging each other to see who could create a ripple furthest out. A few boys climbed up the back of one of the village’s huts and stood on the roof, watching the smoke rising from the cove from this slightly improved vantage. Mostly, though, Black watched Matt. The little boy visited every cluster of children, speaking to them and sharing his confident calm. When Black heard what the boy said, it was to the effect of “Azer has sent someone to save us. The grownups will know what to do soon. Azer will put the knowledge in their hearts. We’ll follow the one Azer sent.”
Suddenly, the boys on the roof crouched low and scrambled down the pile of netting they had used to get up. One of them ran toward Black shouting, “There are men coming! Up the road from the cove!” The other boys from the roof dispersed this news through the minor population.
“How many?” Black asked, holding the boy’s skinny arms to keep him from running away in panic.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” the boy cried.
Black let him go and scaled the hut they’d been on as quick as he could. He lay flat on the roof, both to keep from breaking through the timbers and to avoid being seen. Where the road arced by the shore of the lake, he saw a troop of King Niell’s own men—identifiable by their purple tunics and bands around their helmets. So, about twenty men. Niell’s men were always unruly and overconfident. They had probably broken ranks for a little extra plunder, knowing that if they were successful, Niell would celebrate their vicious initiative. Instantly Black’s mind grasped the tools of battle, and he knew what to do.
On the ground again, Black found a little girl who seemed to have some wits about her. “Go inside,” he told her. “Tell all the grownups to stay there until I come to talk to them. You got that? Tell them to stay there.” She nodded, and he watched her walk far enough in the right direction that he thought there was some chance she’d get the message right.
Black next approached Matt, the only child not running in some haphazard direction. “Matt, I know what to do. I can help you. But you need to get all these children together. I want them all here, in the middle of the square.” Matt nodded slowly in response, his eyes never leaving off their rapt perusal of Black’s features. This was the price Black paid for now being a messenger of the little boy’s beloved god. But Black hoped that Matt’s calm would influence the other children and bring them to hand.
Black then went into the hall to explain his plan to the grownups. He just hoped they didn’t try to discuss it. Discussion was the one thing that could ruin it.
####
Black picked up a hoe as a prop. He still wore his armor and carried his sword, but he hoped that this little prop would be enough to bedevil his enemies’ eyes, so that they wouldn’t realize immediately what they were up against.
The women and children of the village milled in front of him. He’d set them to playing around a maypole. It was a silly idea, and an even sillier sight, but he figured they had to appear to be engaged in some activity. Lilia and Matt were among them, and he checked their location every few heart beats. If something went wrong, and he had to protect only those two, he wanted to know where they were.
Black saw the first of Niell’s soldiers just as the women started screaming—as they were supposed to. The whole crowd of women and children ran toward him and then past him, through the door into the hall. Lilia and Matt went past him and into the relative safety of the hall. He gauged the speed of the slowest runners against the charging soldiers. As he had hoped, the soldiers had been provoked into a headlong chase, the fleetest outstripping the rest. They didn’t recognize the trap.
The last mother, carrying her child, ran past him, and Black stepped in front of the door and drew his sword. He had a few steps before the leading soldier reached him, and he settled into a defensive form—though one that he could quickly turn to be the aggressor. He held his sword over his head, legs bent, weight on his rear leg. He’d been taught these postures decades before. He’d spent most of his life in the gestures of violence. He felt strangely calm.
He turned aside the first attacker’s wild hack and sliced down across the man’s throat. The attacker fell to his knees, raised his hands in front of him, as if begging, saw them coated in his own blood, and collapsed.
Black caught the blades of two more attackers on his curved sword and let them slide away. He chopped at one man’s hand and saw a sword fly away. He kept moving in and out of defense and attack, keeping several men at bay.
As he had hoped, the soldiers in the rear, still trying to chase down the village’s women, were crowding into the backs of the men nearest Black. Several of the soldiers were knocked off balance and Black exacted a punishment for their failure in the forms of war with quick, fatal strikes. Now, in order to attack him, the soldiers had to step over their comrades’ bodies, and Black exploited this and feinted to cause one to stumble, then cut into the thigh of another.
After that the attackers slowed. Though he had loosed the blood of eight or nine men, the soldiers in front of Black finally regained some focus and approached him more methodically. They were still a large enough group to crush him.
“Now!” Black called, and the men of the village rose from lying flat on the roofs around them and hurled down javelins they’d put together from fishing knives, tridents, and old pitchforks. Black stepped into the safety of the doorframe. He stabbed one terrified soldier who tried to follow him. The others fell quickly, like flowers under pelting hail.
Lilia had watched all of Black’s movements from inside the hall. He was only a silhouette against the bright day outside, but she thought his every movement had been beautiful, like a dancer. She sensed some sort of submerged beauty in him, as if she’d picked up a piece of old, dirty crockery, rubbed her finger down its center and seen the beginnings of exquisite patterns and colors.
####
Black’s fighting had been far more eloquent than his speech, and now the villagers listened to him.
“There will be more. Too many to fight soon,” he said. “I can take you to safety. I know the way.”
“Azer has shown him,” Matt said. The little boy stood at Black’s side and held onto his hand.
Black wasn’t sure if Matt’s ejaculation helped his cause or hurt it, so he went on as if it hadn’t happened. “We have to leave now, though. Now.”
Lilia picked up a sack she’d filled with food and clothing for her and Matt. She stepped behind Black. Others darted off to gather what belongings they could. Slowly they arranged themselves behind him in an impromptu marching order. Black set strong men around the outside of the group and sent older boys to watch their back.
He took his first steps, and they all followed. Azer had ordered him to travel west until he hit a river, then follow that to the out.
####
Azer watched the people of the village travel the path he had ordained for them. As he saw Matt in their center, ushered along by Lilia, protected by all the bodies around him, he felt the first stirrings of relief. His hope was like a small bird that, after weathering a storm, spreads its wings to the sun and begins to warm.
These were truly his people now. They depended on him for their survival. He had steered them away from the immediate danger closing on their village, but they had far to go to escape the threats from their fellow men. Their kingdom was in upheaval. The lands to the in were rigidly controlled; they would find no haven there. To the out was more turmoil—war, plague, the ongoing intolerance of man for man. Azer saw a way through all the danger, though he didn’t know if his people would be capable of following it. He had found a sanctuary—a place long abandoned by other powers and by humankind. Azer would prepare a secret home there for Matt and for the other people Matt needed to have around him. But it would be a long journey.
The gravest threat, however, came from his brother gods. If they gained even an inkling of what he planned, all would be lost. Azer turned his attention away from his villagers and tried to imitate once again the disinterest of the other gods. He would rely on his chosen champion to guide his people, without intervening much himself. It felt like a terrible risk. But every decision, since he had resolved to defy the order of his kind, was a terrible risk.
One of Azer’s thoughts could encompass hours for the men below. His musing was interrupted by Matt’s prayers on the first night away from his village. “I’ve never been more scared,” Matt whispered, exhausted and already sliding down the inevitable slope toward sleep. “But I’ve never been so sure that you protect us and that you love us. I’m sorry if my being scared seems like I don’t trust you. I do. I do.”
####
The villagers walked for three days along the banks of the river and then turned inland to cross a series of forested hills. They had no reason other than Black’s urging to travel that way. He told them to stay away from other people, and so they tramped through thickets and mire, struggling for every mile. When they saw a road or a footpath, it looked like a bed of ease to them.
Black was often short-tempered. If questioned about his choice of route, he would tell his questioner to go back to King Niell if he preferred that route. When the whole line had to wait for one family to gather its belongings, Black would stalk ahead, break sticks and curse to himself. The villagers watched him warily.
What they didn’t see was that he trembled in his blankets at night, his body ravaged without the familiar soothings of alcohol.
The group’s food stocks dwindled, and they established a rationing system by giving to women and children first. They foraged for berries and edible roots, but they were a coastal people and had always gained their living from the water. They began to truly worry that they would starve and die in this inhospitable landscape.
Lilia heard the complaints of her relatives and neighbors, and she wanted to reassure them. She had faith in Black, and in Azer, and in Matt.
She approached Black as they walked one day, for most of the others were afraid of him and stayed a few steps away. “Where will we find more food if we do not approach a town?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“Everyone is worried.”
“They should be. Did I promise you three square meals a day and a ration of salt?” Black spoke with anger in his voice, as he often did.
“You haven’t promised, but you lead us.”
“No, I follow. I follow Azer’s directions. He must have some plan for this, as he wants you all to survive.”
“I know. I believe that,” Lilia said. “But everyone else follows you.” She pushed her heart into her words to let Black know that she was the most ardent of his followers. “They are scared, and you can help.”
Lilia looked behind her to see that at least a dozen people were unashamedly listening to her conversation. Black seemed to realize the same thing. He spoke up for all of them to hear, “We’ll find food. When we need it, we’ll find it.”
“I know you will,” Lilia thought to herself, though she said nothing.
Later that day the troop walked along a spine of rock, with an overlook to their side. They could see a small town below them and patchy fields in the surrounding land where sheep grazed.
At night, they set up a camp and began disbursing their food. Black walked into the forest on his own, as he did every night. Once he was out of sight, the people began to mutter.
The matron who had been put in charge of the stores gave Lilia a wedge of flat bread and a small handful of nuts. “This is the last,” she said. “We only have food for tonight. After that it’s all gone.”
“We have to go back to that town,” her husband, Tahn, said. “Whatever reason there is for avoiding other folks, it’s not worth dying for. And we’re starving for sure.”
Most of the villagers sat in a rough circle, and they lifted their eyes but had little energy to do more. A few announced, “Yes,” or “That’s true.”
“Black’s been right up till now,” Lilia responded. “He saved all our lives. You know that.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Tahn replied. “But I don’t want to throw it away again, nor all these little ones.”
Lilia sensed the mood of the people was precariously balanced—on her side, maybe. “I won’t eat any more of the food we brought, for I know a better feast awaits us,” she announced.
Matt looked up, intrigued by her religious tone. “Me, neither,” he said and put his small store into her hands. This act swayed many of the people onto her side, for they had started to understand that Matt had truly been favored by a god.
Lilia walked around putting a few crumbs in each hand that reached out to her. “We’ll be well. We’ll find what we need,” she said. Many looked her in the eye and nodded.
“If there’s nothing tomorrow, I’m turning back,” announced Tahn.
Lilia ignored him, and the people went about the routines of camp, eventually settling down to sleep, once Black had returned.
The next day they walked without rest and with no new source of food. Black was silent, determined, as if he had a clear purpose in mind. He only stopped to pick up a youngster who was lagging.
When evening had swarmed into the forest canopy, Black spoke for the first time that day. “Do you hear that?” he asked. Those near him stopped and heard a hushed gurgle from running water somewhere ahead.
“What is it?” asked Lilia.
“We’ll make camp near it. You’ll see,” Black responded.
Though he made no commitments and gave little reason for hope, Lilia was sure the sustenance he had promised was just ahead.
Tahn sidled near her and whispered, “We’re turning back tonight.”
She ignored him and ran ahead, toward the sound of the river. None of her people would abandon her while she was alone like this. They followed.
She came to the river where it split and writhed over a wide field of boulders. The sunlight streaked the far bank. Then a multihued sparkle leapt into a patch of sun and fell away. It happened again and again. The river was full of salmon struggling upstream. The salmon leaped in arcs the shape of a rainbow, with all the colors of the rainbow condensed in their scales.
The others of her village came up behind Lilia, and she heard her nephew’s familiar voice, gasping a prayer of thanks.
####
Those sitting around the camp one night heard a crash in the underbrush, as someone or something ran toward them. As will happen when you can’t see the source of a sound, particularly within the domain of twilight, it seemed very loud. Children began to wonder if this was a bear approaching them or possibly some sort of bogeyman. But, at last, Peter, one of the most rambunctious of the village’s boys, appeared in their midst and the sounds of the monster disappeared behind him.
Peter saw the eyes of everyone in the village on him, and he blurted out: “He’s talking with a man. He’s talking with a stranger.”
“What are you saying, Peter?” asked his father. “I don’t like foolishness at this time.”
“A stranger,” Peter repeated. “Black is talking with a stranger.”
“How do you know this?” his father asked, in a grim voice.
“I followed him.” Peter was shamefaced for a moment, but he pulled himself up with his next statement. “Is he going to betray us?”
Lilia thought of leaping to defend Black, but Matt spoke first. Though the boy’s voice was quiet, his words came across as urgent. “Did he have long hair as silver as the moon?”
“He did,” Peter answered.
“Did he wear a robe, the same color, that flowed from his shoulders down to his feet?”
“He– He did.”
“Was he taller than any man in this village? Was he at least an arm’s span taller than Black?” Matt spoke as if he were looking right at what he described.
“Yes.”
“That was not a stranger. You saw Azer, who watches us and protects us.”
All the displaced village was silent. This moment forced many of them at last to believe that they were guided by a god. It was as shocking in its own way as the violent expulsion from their homes had been.
“We are very fortunate,” Matt whispered. All those around him heard, quiet as he was, as if they leaned into his thoughts. “We thank you, Azer, for our salvation and for our sustenance. We follow where you lead. We are the most fortunate people to have your attention.”
Some of those around Matt muttered, “Thank you, thank you,” like a congregation. Others couldn’t yet bring their hearts to worship.
Black tramped back into camp, making far less noise than the panicked boy had a few minutes before. Still, they all stared at him, as if he were bellowing and screaming. He sat down, slightly uncomfortable. Someone brought him a fresh-cooked piece of fish, and he concentrated on eating it.
####
They stayed beside that river, catching fish, cooking it, and curing it, for several days. The fish could be seized with bare hands, stuck with a spear, wrapped in a net, or scooped with a basket. There were so many that the people only took the largest and the healthiest. Children caught fish just for the challenge and the joy of holding a squirming, living body in their hands for a moment, then let them go. They ate roe in the morning, roasted and smoked fish throughout the day, and still they put aside copious stores.
Life was so easy for those few days that they all felt the favor of their god and settled into it as if they were cradled in the palm of his hand.
Matt did no work, but the others didn’t resent his leisure. They accepted that he was the reason the god cared for them, and they approached him with something of the cautiousness with which one approaches an altar. They also watched him closely, gauging what had first brought the god’s favor and what might assure its continuance. They took to frequently muttering Azer’s name, as Matt did. They invoked Azer for every benignity and asked his aid against every discomfort.
Matt was free from self-consciousness, and so he had no idea that others were monitoring him and imitating him. He was experiencing the greatest happiness of his life, as if every part of the universe had suddenly aligned in front of him. He was sure his joy would only increase as he now approached the god. He wandered through the camp and into the fringe of the woods. He sat beside Black and asked about the route ahead. The mercenary would always answer gently, treating the boy’s hopes as carefully as he might hold a baby.
Lilia felt best when she was applying her energy and her thought to some laborious task. She oversaw the curing and packing of the fish. While some had so embraced their current comfort that they forgot that it must end, she thought only of a harsher tomorrow. She loaded packs of the smoked and dried fish as heavy as she thought each person in the community could handle. She often called children over to pick up a bundle and test their strength, for even they would have to carry a portion of the group’s food.
“How much do we have?” Black asked Lilia one day.
Black’s voice was the one thing that could make her cease her activities entirely, and she turned to gaze at him. One hand was stable on her hip, while the other flitted to her face, seeking a reckoning of whether she looked clean or dirty, fresh or sweaty. “We’re nearly full up, I’d say. I’m assuming your god won’t drop us down a small herd of horse.”
“Hah,” Black expressed amusement with noise but no evidence of it on his face. “Ask your Matt. He’s the only one with any sway.”
Lilia looked around for her nephew. Being reminded of him, she couldn’t feel at ease until she’d confirmed that he was well. He was sitting atop a boulder in the middle of the stream, with his face tilted up to the sun.
“They used to tell me that he was a fool and needed to be set to some hard work.”
A married couple, old enough to usually be stern, was wading in the river, trying to catch one of the salmon together. When the fish writhed away from them, the husband splashed his wife. She laughed.
“You’re the only one with real sense among them,” Black said to Lilia. “Without you they’d be dead thrice over and set to starve again once this run was over.”
“I don’t think so. Someone has to do it, and it may as well be me.”
“You shouldn’t underestimate your value. I’ve seen–” For an instant Black’s voice sounded truer than it ever had before, as if he’d opened his heart. But now he choked it back. “I’ve seen a lot of the world.” He looked away and shook his ragged head. “What I need to know is, if we leave tomorrow, how long will the food hold out?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe a month with good forage along the way.”
“We’re gong to need it all,” Black said. “We leave tomorrow.”
Lilia’s heart wrenched in sorrow, as any ending, even one she had been preparing for, was now hurtful to her.
####
Black walked into the forest every day, even though Azer had not appeared to him in some time. He made the trip again that night. He walked without particular direction, except to burrow deeper into the forest until he was lost. Then, if the god chose to find him, he would find him.
The elements of the forest—roots underfoot, the smell of earth in his nostrils, the intrusions of jagged branches—came to seem like an endless series. Black’s senses and muscles were tensed with a hint of fear, expecting the appearance of Azer. But the god didn’t show. Black looked into the endless leaves.
“I don’t know how much of this I can take,” Black whispered. “You’ve kindled me back to life, and life is pain to me. Everything I fled, everything I wished to forget, now I must remember.
“So it goes. I know you will not release me from this task. But sometimes I wish I had chosen death when we first met. You asked me to do this. And yet, you’ve given me little enough help. A few baskets of fish! Hah! And we have hundreds of miles to travel. Well, you’re the one who will regret it if I fail. I don’t care if I die.”
Black waited a few moments to see if the overbearing forest had any response, but it was silent.
####
Azer watched his people cautiously, surreptitiously. They advanced day by day toward the place he had chosen for them. He was relieved that they had all stayed together, as it would confuse the gaze of the other gods and deflect their attention from Matt. If they understood that he cared only for Matt, they would strike the boy down instantly.
As his people crossed into the provinces of other gods, Azer knew that he would have some trouble before he could usher them to safety. They were too much of an anomaly, for one thing, and thus would draw the eye of any god for violating the ageless patterns. And since the people had all taken to praying to Azer in frequent and devoted gasps, the watching god would quickly trace the anomaly back to him. The only question was whether they would confront him before he could slip away to inhabit his sanctuary.
As often as he could duck his brothers’ attention, Azer traveled to the hidden land he was preparing for his people. Azer built in his new sanctuary, seizing pieces of Matt’s dreams, shaping them into stone and dirt and timber, growing crops and gardens in the shapes of his wishes. Soon, he had a grove of fertile fields and comfortable homes. It looked a little like the village that his people had come from, although it also would look strange to anyone but Matt.
####
All around them was dryness. The people had marched through dried out stream beds and raspy grasses brittle with dehydration for the last several days. It was disconcerting for people accustomed to the proximity of an immense lake, people who used to sail beyond all sight of the shore and bob on the water, with nothing around them but more of the blue element. Now, they looked around themselves and saw nothing but more of the dry plains.
It was a sign of the change in the community that they now followed Black into this without doubt.
“Do you have any idea how far this goes on?” Lilia asked him as they rested one day, the oppressive sun straight overhead and no shade within sight.
He shook his head. The heat weighed on him, and he sat with his head and shoulders slumped away from it.
Lilia was the only villager who still treated Black as a man, rather than a prophet or an instrument of the god. They took his grunts for omens and scurried away from any show of ill temper as from damnation.
“How do you know we are going the right way then?” she asked.
Black looked up at her, providing a sudden glimpse into the caverns where his thoughts dwelled. She felt exhilarated.
“I see the way because Azer is always in front of me now. Since we came onto this plain, he has been there, like a pillar of smoke and fire, in front of me. That way.” He pointed, but Lilia saw nothing but open sky and unbroken plain.
“I hope it’s not far,” Lilia said. “We have little water and almost no food.”
Black grunted. “If we don’t make it, it’s his fault.” A nod toward the pillar of smoke and fire. “And at least in death I’ll be cool.”
Lilia sat down beside Black and together they watched as the people in the village offered Matt food and drink. One woman sponged off Matt’s neck and arms to keep him cool. They had all given up a part of their stores to supply Matt. He feasted while they starved. If he had realized they did this, he would have stopped them and demanded an equal distribution. But he was so wrapped in anticipation of meeting his god that the current world made little impression on him.
“You don’t believe the way that they do,” Black said.
“I believe in the god. I believe Matt. I believe you. But, no, I won’t give myself up as they have. What about you? You’re the only one who has made Azer’s acquaintance, and yet I don’t see you praying or joining their circles of devotion.”
“I call him Sir Azer,” Black whispered back. Neither of them wanted to be overheard making light of the god. “I am like his slave. A slave may believe in his master, may follow his master’s whims, may cow before his master, but he doesn’t love his master.”
“You think they love Azer? Matt certainly does, but the others…”
“They will follow me on and on into this desolation. Without food and water, they walk into certain death if Azer isn’t there. What else could be called love?”
Lilia gazed up at Black, hoping for another moment of connection, but his eyes never left the point on the horizon he led them toward.
Yes, she thought, love could make you forget that your world was a desert. She sat beside him, hoping never to move again.
####
Azer had ensconced himself in his sanctuary. From there he watched as his people got closer and closer, hour by hour. But he couldn’t step out to help them, because at the same time, he watched as several of his brothers approached him from the vantages atop the stars that they usually preferred. They traveled far faster than Matt and the villagers, and they soon stood at the gate to the grove he’d created. They called him out by the name he used among his own kind.
Azer met them.
They began as he knew they would with peaceful but insistent questioning. When he refused to answer, they pointed out that he had already broken the customs of their kind. All of the gods were mystified by his behavior. They urged him to leave with them and fly to their usual haunts. They promised the pleasures of their orders.
He knew they had only one object, which was to force him to return to normalcy. Soon the politeness would disappear, and their meeting would become a pure contest of force.
They pointed out that he couldn’t resist the three of them together, let alone some of the stronger gods if they took an interest in what he was doing.
Azer acknowledged this was true, but he refused to step through the gate he’d built to the outside world. The sanctuary gave him strength, in part because the people slogging toward him believed in the idea of sanctuary and believed in him.
The other gods threatened to destroy what he had made, saying then he would comprehend his folly. Their threat was credible. With enough time, they certainly could tear down the grove and all the buildings and gardens he’d created. He had no answer to this threat.
Azer thought he had lost. He would have to return to the gods, forsaking all he had hoped for, or suffer the pain of seeing those same hopes torn down around him. He imagined Matt reaching the spot where the grove now stood and finding nothing left. He saw the little boy kicking the dust and ash that had been spires or verdant orchards built just for him. He knew the boy would die soon after in pain and privation, for the plains were merciless. Azer’s hopes died and he twisted in agony.
He was certain he would have to give up, and yet he hesitated. The other gods began to assail the outer wall of his sanctuary, carrying out their threat. A pile cracked, chunks of the wall fell and shattered on the ground.
One character of love that Azer hadn’t experienced before is that it inspires desperation at the thought of its own end. Desperation was not an emotion the gods countenanced. But now Azer found himself desperate enough to carry his resolve to its ultimate end.
Azer yelled to the other gods to stop and declared that if they did not leave him and his people alone, he would slay himself. This was also a threat against them, for their order required one hundred forty-four members, and they couldn’t imagine what they would be if there were only one hundred forty-three gods. They paused a long time, interrupted in their thought processes, needing to assimilate a new possibility. But Azer knew how they would respond, for it was the only response that would seem logical to a god. They would leave him be, assuming that he would change his mind and return to them someday. This possibility was soothing, compared to the irreparable breach in their numbers if he carried out his threat.
####
At first the grove looked unexceptional, being ringed with plain trees. Perhaps, people thought, it was one of the stands of half-exhausted trees around an evaporated pool that they had passed at distant intervals the last few days. The people were so exhausted, hungry, and dry themselves that hope had become a painful luxury, and they held it back.
As they trudged closer and closer, they saw that the trees around the grove were exceptionally tall. They began to mutter to each other, saying, “What is this?” “Could this be a new land?” They didn’t yet dare to ask if this was their destination.
Another hour or two of progress, and they could see that the row of trees was strangely regular—each the same height, with seemingly the same number of branches and needles.
The muttering grew to excited comments and quick conversations. Finally, Tahn raised the courage to call, “Black! Black, what is this?”
“It is your destination,” Black replied.
Matt and most of the others cried in joy and immediately surged forward, finding energy as if they’d already drunk from the grove’s streams and eaten its fruit.
Lilia also gasped, though the emotion in her breast was more troubled. She’d heard cold death in Black’s words: “your destination.” Soon, she and Black were the only ones standing together, as the others dashed ahead.
Lilia waited. She didn’t think she could go forward without him, but he didn’t move. She waited longer. She longed to hold him every night from then until the end of her time.
Black looked at her and understood. If his face hadn’t been hidden by years’ worth of hair, she would have seen the first expression of tenderness to cross it since it had last been bare.
“I have to turn away here,” Black said.
Lilia felt a drive to protest, but her mind felt as dull as if it had been crushed against an iron barrier. She couldn’t form a clear enough sense of anything to make words. Finally, she honed her thoughts down to the question, “Why?”
“My bargain with him is concluded,” Black said. “Matt is there.”
“You could stay with us.” Lilia meant to say “stay with me,” but somehow it had emerged as “us.” She would dwell on that switch and regret it for the rest of her life.
“I don’t deserve sanctuary,” Black said.
They shared no more words, though they understood each other. Lilia wanted only to continue to see him every day, to continue to hope. His presence made the world different. He felt something similar, but he would not allow himself to indulge its possibility. He had made oaths to another.
As Black turned his back on Lilia, the rest of her people ran into the cooling shade in front of the grove—the first kindness they had felt in weeks. Azer appeared at the gate. His inhuman, pale color and his sudden beauty arrested them all, except for Matt, who had been truly expecting this moment. His was a remarkably powerful belief to not be perturbed by the appearance of its object.
Matt ran close to the god. Azer reached out to the boy’s head and touched him for the first time.
“Welcome,” said Azer.
Azer experienced a happiness that none of the gods had known before—in part because he knew that the life of a boy, even if he grows to manhood and declines in a slow coast through old age, is a blink of time to a god—a sentence in an endless story.
